Rolling slow down puzzles Highway 3 drivers

The in basket: Glenn Hostetter called to say he saw a puzzling
thing coming out of Bremerton on Highway 304 on Monday. April 15.
The line of cars he was in was met by a state Department of
Transportation truck that pulled out in front of them just as they
reached the merge with southbound Highway 3 traffic.

A second WSDOT truck did the same thing with the Highway 3
traffic. A car positioned itself between the two trucks as the
caravan crawled toward Gorst at about 5 miles per hour. One of the
trucks had an electronic sign on the back saying it was a rolling
slow down.

When they got almost to Gorst, the car pulled to the side and
the two trucks sped up and continued on their way.

Traffic in the other directions was proceeding normally.

What was it all about? he asked.

The out basket: Duke Stryker, head of the state maintenance
crews here, said the slowdown kept traffic away from another state
crew that was removing some debris from the roadway up ahead. He
didn’t say what it was, but it clearly wasn’t big enough to require
closure of a lane of the highway, with all the attendant signs and
warnings, or small enough a state trooper could throw it onto the
shoulder.

Rolling slow downs occur from time to time, but the only one
I’ve ever witnessed personally involved a state patrol car weaving
back and forth at slow speed across all the lanes of southbound
Highway 3 as it approached Highway 304. I think that one involved a
complicated traffic stop on the shoulder.